Philadelphia Inquirer
Friday, September 4, 1998

Controller to audit city crime statistics

The accuracy of the numbers, as reported by the police, has been under intense fire.

By Craig R. McCoy and Mark Fazlollah,
INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS

Responding to growing evidence that Philadelphia police have been underreporting crime, the City Controller's Office soon will begin an independent audit in an effort to determine the extent of the problem and restore public confidence in the statistics.

The Controller's Office has audited aspects of police performance, such as spending on the 911 system, but it has never examined the city's overall system for counting crime.

Controller Jonathan A. Saidel, who met with Police Commissioner John F. Timoney last week to discuss the audit, said yesterday that he had ordered the review because of widespread public doubt about official crime figures.

``Everywhere I have gone, from civic associations to community groups, people have continually voiced concern about the statistics - whether they are accurate or not,'' Saidel said in an interview.

Saidel said aides from the Controller's Office would meet shortly with Police Department officials to work out an agreement on the scope of the audit and access to documents. He said the audit would be finished within three months.

Under Timoney and his predecessor, Richard Neal, the department has been rocked by disclosures that its reported tallies for major offenses - including robberies, burglaries, assaults and car thefts - understated the actual incidence of crime in Philadelphia.

In May, Timoney ordered an internal investigation into the 1997 crime totals after an Inquirer analysis raised doubts about a steep drop in reported crime in the second half of the year. The police probe found that hundreds and possibly thousands of property crimes had been accidentally excluded from the count.

In late July, Timoney said internal auditors had found serious problems with the numbers for the first half of this year as well. The figures understated crime by as much as 8 percent, Timoney said, meaning that 4,000 or more offenses went unreported.

The commissioner took the extraordinary step of withholding the Philadelphia statistics for the first half of 1998 from the FBI's closely watched city-by-city survey of crime in America. Timoney said that ``with the exception of homicide, I've got no confidence in the figures.''

He ordered a citywide recount, now nearing completion, that is expected to yield a crime total significantly higher than the city's preliminary number.

Timoney, who took over the department in March, has said the problem stems from a widespread practice of downgrading offenses, so that a robbery becomes a theft or a shooting goes on the books as a ``hospital case'' - transporting an injured person to the hospital.

Crime statistics have assumed increased importance in recent years as a yardstick for evaluating police commanders and deploying officers. However, Timoney has said that most of the downgradings appeared to stem from ``stupidity, carelessness, laziness,'' not intentional efforts to cover up crime.

Under Neal, the department withdrew two years' worth of crime data filed with the FBI after questions arose about their accuracy.

Timoney could not be reached for comment yesterday on Saidel's audit, but Rendell administration officials said they welcomed the outside review.

``We're making every effort to correct the process so that we get accurate and reliable numbers,'' said Kevin Feeley, Mayor Rendell's spokesman, ``because they are the cornerstone of the city's crime-fighting efforts.''

For years, experts have been recommending that police crime counts nationwide be subject to outside scrutiny.

Criminologist Lawrence W. Sherman of the University of Maryland wrote recently that the problems in Philadelphia and elsewhere were ``just the tip of a very big iceberg.''

In New York, State Comptroller H. Carl McCall, a Democrat, has been seeking for two years to audit police statistics in New York City, where a sharp drop in reported crime has captured national attention. His inquiry has been rebuffed by New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, a Republican, and the matter is now the subject of a court dispute.

The St. Louis Police Department may be the only one in the country that routinely submits its crime figures to outside scrutiny. For about 15 years, its figures have been audited annually by professors at St. Louis University.

James F. Gilsinan, dean of the university's college of public service, said yesterday that his team annually reviews small samples of reported crimes. It interviews the victims of crimes to see if police handled the cases properly and scrutinizes all paperwork to make sure offenses were classified accurately and reported correctly to the FBI.

Asked whether the scrutiny deterred police from fudging the numbers, he replied: ``You bet.''

Gilsinan said the approach should be adopted elsewhere.

``The more the data is used,'' he said, ``the higher the stake is in making sure the data is accurate.''